TV Note: Alison Krauss and Union Station Soundstage (7/21)

[David Shasha]

Alison Krauss and Union Station Soundstage will be screened on AXS TV Thursday, July 21st at 11:00 AM

Alison Krauss and Union Station: A Short Tribute

 

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

There isn’t any wonder that I fall

Why do we suffer, crossing off the years

There must be a reason for it all.

 

Alison Krauss (Written by Ron Block), “There is a Reason”

 

Back in 1995, I noticed a CD by a group of Bluegrass musicians in one of the listening stations of a record store whose name now escapes me.  I went up to the bank of listening stations as I have so often done, and put on the headphones.  When I listened to the CD, “Now That I’ve Found You,” a collection of older songs and new tracks by Alison Krauss and Union Station, a group that had achieved cult status among those who enjoy music rather than hype and pretense, I was transported to a music that I had not really listened to since first encountering the brilliant Ricky Skaggs back in the early 1980s.

 

Alison Krauss and Union Station played a very tuneful and intense Bluegrass, a music that continues to speak to the essence of the American experience.  Bluegrass, a modified version of Irish folk music with its twangy guitars, jiggy fiddles and lyrics encumbered by dread and death, was, along with Jazz, the quintessential American music form.  Unlike Country music, Bluegrass never sought to make compromises with the marketplace.  The tunes were accessible but raw, the musicianship demanding but pure and simple.  While George Jones, brilliant though he might be, would turn into a Nashville version of “booze and chicks” Frank Sinatra, Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe preached the gospel of Bluegrass from the mountaintop.  The gospel roots of Bluegrass were never really far from the best of these Union Station recordings.

 

Alison Krauss was able to combine a knack for finding wonderfully rich and melodic songs and playing those songs in a simple and direct way.  Her marvelously expressive voice veered toward the epic and the heavenly; the inclusion on “Now That I’ve Found You” of a couple of inspirational gospel-inflected tracks, “In the Palm of Your Hand” and “When You Say Nothing At All,” enveloped Krauss in the aura of a great spiritual master, a singer who could combine the great pathos and deep reservoir of feeling of gospel with the epic quality of American pop classicism that was unique to her own traditionalist studiousness.  The songs ascended with a fervor that bespoke of the great wisdom and sense of temporal duration in the great and noble heritage of this wonderful music.

 

On seeing Alison Krauss and Union Station perform at the Town Hall back in 1996 just prior to the release of their breakthrough “So Long So Wrong,” I was amazed to see that the troupe was a white-hot party band that really rocked out.  Without a drum kit and with simple acoustic instruments, Stand-Up bass, mandolin, guitar, banjo and fiddle, the group took a traditional music and breathed a wind of fresh air into it.  They were funny, sexy and loose, one of the best “rock” acts I had seen in quite a long time.

 

Whether performing Ron Block’s profoundly touching Christian odes to the pain of everyday living and deep spiritual belief, covering Bad Company’s “Oh Atlanta,” Lennon and McCartney’s magnificent “I Will,” Todd Rundgren’s chestnut of a ballad “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference,” or the obscure oldie “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You,” Union Station were that rarest of things, a purist group that played a very profound, inspiring and accessible music – not your run-of-the-mill “roots” musicians who performed in a stiff and stuffed-shirt manner in slavish imitation of the past.

 

Since she released her first record, still a precocious 18 years old, back in 1987, Krauss has remained, even as she attained tremendous popular success (and now her guitar player and co-vocalist Dan Tyminski has, because of the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack, where he sang the bits that George Clooney lip-synched in the film, has become a star in his own right; one can hope that her other guitarist, the singer-songwriter Ron Block achieves a comparable success), true to her pure Bluegrass roots. 

 

Eschewing the big money and wide market reach of the major Nashville labels, she continues to remain on the roster of Rounder Records, keeping it almost single-handedly a major force in the folk and traditional market.  She refuses to glitz up the music on the lines of a Shania Twain or a Faith Hill.  The band tours constantly and has yet to play arenas and stadiums.  Union Station is the model of “no sell out” that rock poseurs like U2, Radiohead and REM should look to.

 

Their purist obstinacy has led to the renewal of the traditional Bluegrass form with Dolly Parton, Lee Ann Womack and Trisha Yearwood, to name some of the most prominent Nashville stars using the form today, now making Bluegrass-dominated records.  Parton, just this past year, has released two acclaimed Bluegrass CDs using musicians affiliated with Krauss and her group, feeding off the largess of the Krauss machine. 

 

Even more extraordinary has been the massive commercial phenomenon of the soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ failed movie, “O Brother Where Art Thou,” which has brought the music to circles hitherto unknown.  A couple of months back, a concert for the album was held at Carnegie Hall with Elvis Costello as emcee (Costello, a devotee of the music, also performed in the mid-1980s with Ricky Skaggs on Skaggs’ classic “Live in London” recording) and Union Station topping the bill.

 

Last year, Krauss produced a recording for a Union Station-like group called Nickel Creek.  The Krauss formula was well in evidence on the eponymous “Nickel Creek” which appeared on another small label called Sugar Hill Records.  The record, as was the case with Krauss’s recordings was a brilliant mélange of pure Bluegrass and traditional folk, coupled with the leavening of richly textured and densely structured pop sensibility that lifted the material out of the sometimes-plodding depressive edge of the most traditional Bluegrass.  Nickel Creek, little by little, as with Krauss some years earlier, achieved its commercial success and has now become a fixture on the Country charts.

 

On their latest CD, “New Favorite,” Alison Krauss and Union Station have created yet another brilliant assemblage of the most pure Bluegrass roots along with the rich and deep melodicism that has been their hallmark.  Their playing is second to none in the genre, and their vocal harmonization and choice of songs is constantly first-rate.  Block’s writing contribution to the CD (and one wishes that the group included more of his material on their CDs) “It All Comes Down to You” is a gospel-tinged piece of Bluegrass with all the hallmarks of the best of the genre: The sense that we are listening to a few friends sitting on a porch singing in the hills.  The first single from the CD, “The Lucky One,” is a piece of sunny optimism that bespeaks the great emotional spectrum of this music; Bluegrass, like many other great traditional forms of music, speaks of love and joy, hope and triumph, but also of sadness and sorrow, death and longing.

 

Many of you reading this have never sat down and exposed themselves to the music of the rural South and the Appalachian mountains; those great banjos, fiddles and mandolins that are the mainstay of the genre, with the minor exception of a Garth Brooks or Shania Twain recording.  The more adventurous of you have perhaps gone out and bought a Dixie Chicks’ CD, yet another of the post-Union Station triumphs for the purists in the Country community. 

 

In the final assessment one must see that Alison Krauss has been a very positive and important influence on the development of classic American music over the past decade: When Lyle Lovett went out and recorded his traditional Texas masterpiece and one of the most important American recordings in the past couple of decades, on a par with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” back in the 1970s, “Step Inside This House,” he had Alison Krauss singing the high harmonies that were so crucial to relating the affective qualities of the music. 

 

The musical universe of Alison Krauss and Union Station, for those who are now sitting and listening to the illiterate gunk of Limp Bizkit or the art-rock muzak of Radiohead, is one that will startle and astonish you.  The sweetness and warmth of these recordings exemplify the great moral core and spiritual depth that permit the listener to enter this world of song and to find the Muse that animates this most authentic of the American genres of music.  The voice of Alison Krauss, along with a precious few today, most prominently Art Garfunkel (whose own recent recordings and performances have begun to prove yet again what a treasure he is to American popular music) and the genius of Al Green, has reached the pinnacle of her art and has created a body of music that is rare in a marketplace that has frowned on sincerity and honesty as a means of expression.

 

The songs on these CDs are spare and melodious.  They instantly appeal to anyone who sits down to listen to them.  My children, who are stuck mired in the Britney Spears-Boy Bands syndrome, will always permit me to pop a Union Station CD into the car stereo.  Alison Krauss’s voice and the simple and plaintive musicianship of the ensemble are addressed to fill the huge void in our culture, the lack of authentically pure and spiritually uplifting music. 

 

While the marketplace becomes more and more glutted with artistic product that is merely commercial product, the work of Alison Krauss and Union Station is an authentic American achievement.  Their work, humble yet accessible, is a pablum-free zone of the most elevated of the American art forms, the music of the rural South, a music steeped in the traditions of this most wonderful and still-intriguing forms of cultural métissage that we have in this increasingly strident and pretentious world. 

 

Such superb Art should be applauded and consumed with great energy and enthusiasm.  The recordings of Alison Krauss and Union Station speak to the most basic facets of who we are as human beings, our hearts and souls.

 

 

David Shasha

 

From SHU 18, August 24, 2001

 

Concert Review: Tony Rice with Alison Krauss and Union Station, DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC, May 16, 2007

 

In the current debased musical climate it would seem to be counterintuitive for a financially successful artist to set aside their own commercial concerns and devote one of their concert tours to a role relegating them to a supporting artist role.

 

And yet, for all intents and purposes, this is what Alison Krauss and Union Station have done on their current tour.

 

Marking the expansive tradition that links Bluegrass artists into a unified and sharing community, Krauss, who is now perhaps the most successful Bluegrass artist ever and is an ambassador worldwide for the music, has devoted a string of concert dates to honor her own musical idol Tony Rice.  Eschewing her group's standard repertoire, Krauss decided to perform a set devoted to Rice's back catalog.  It is rare to find musicians these days who are so devoted to their heroes that they would put their name under that of the lesser-known artist.

 

Tony Rice became known to connoisseurs of old-timey music way back in the mid-1970s when he fronted an early version of J.D. Crowe and the New South, a legendary Bluegrass ensemble which included future legends Ricky Skaggs and Union Station's own Jerry Douglas; each of the men would go on to fame and renown as some of the most talented and enduring musicians in Country music.  Rice recorded a string of albums that for many exemplify the craft and art of traditional acoustic Americana better than anyone else.  His first solo records on the Rounder label, the label of Alison Krauss as well, set the pattern for his virtuoso talents as a guitarist and arranger.  These recordings courageously reproduced the rich traditions of the American South and its storehouse of Mountain songs; but as he was reconstructing this tradition, he began to innovate with guitar sounds and patterns that stretched the genre from its humble rural roots to include, Jazz, Blues and even Classical intonations.

 

Rice's career has led him into various musical genres, always trying to expand the parochial limitations of the field with his innovative playing.

 

Alison Krauss has just released a new CD which is a compilation of recordings that shows the ways in which she has stretched the boundaries of Bluegrass music by challenging the orthodoxies that rule it.  She has always displayed an iconoclastic instinct for Pop and Rock and Roll sensibilities and cares little about what purists might think about it.  Her cover versions of songs from Bad Company, Todd Rundgren, the Allman Brothers and others from non-Bluegrass environments have lent her work a depth of resonance that is matched by the sheer genius of Union Station's musicianship and her own incomparable vocal stylings which mark her as having perhaps the most splendid and uplifting voice in contemporary music. 

 

Anyone who has ever heard Alison Krauss sing will most certainly fall in love with Alison Krauss - of this fact there is little question.  Her voice is a treasure to behold as anyone who has fallen under its enchanting spell will be able to attest.  Sitting in an auditorium as she is singing makes the listener feel as if he has passed on and gone to heaven; the experience of hearing her sing is that profound.

 

Sadly, Rice's own voice is now barely functioning and it was left to Krauss and her cohort Dan Tyminski to sing the songs from his repertoire.  And as Rice is not himself a songwriter of note, many of these songs were cover versions of songs that Rice recorded on his albums and which Krauss associates in her own mind with him.  It was Rice who discovered a precocious 12-year old Krauss and brought her into the business way back when.  Now that Krauss is a gigantic star, she is returning the favor.

 

The concert was less glitzy than a standard Krauss and Union Station show, as the group reached back into their foundations in Bluegrass and let rip.  The mixture of a warm melodic sensibility with a firm devotion to the conventions of the Bluegrass genre was evident from the moment the band began to play.  As the show settled in, Rice provided his signature guitar leads which as I have already said are distinctive and absolutely inspiring.  Musicians of the caliber of Union Station, particularly Rice's old bandmate the Dobro player Jerry Douglas, were able to quite easily integrate Rice's virtuosity into their already heady mix of traditional brilliance.  Bandmates Ron Block on banjo and guitar and Barry Bales on Upright Bass were equally up to the task, making a dramatic statement on their own as accompanists.

 

The songs were played with the same balance of strict devotion and smoothness that is characteristic of Union Station at its very best.  Since her commercial breakthrough in 1995 Krauss has experimented with more commercial types of music: on her latest compilation CD "A Hundred Miles or More" she has put together a set of new material amidst the older tracks that make up the bulk of the package that sets her as a Pop diva blazing a new trail of more mainstream Pop music that showcases her lovely voice in a way that it has never really been showcased before.  But tonight there was no room for the more flashy commercial sounds as the band reached back to find its roots and inspiration in Rice's legacy.

 

The songs were not of the normal Krauss repertory and the setting of Constitution Hall could not have been more appropriate.  The austere and historical nature of the location and the sterling acoustics of the hall lent the evening a sense of profound gravitas that transported the audience into a musical space that evoked the majesty of time and history which was conceptually linked to the origins of American culture in the front porches of the mountains and the organic culture that was developed among the ordinary people who tended to bringing the songs of Ireland to a new world.

 

Rice stepped out of the shadows after the first half hour to do a sterling instrumental duet with Jerry Douglas that displayed each of musician's genius.  Without the other members of the band playing, the two men delved deep into their own musical artistic sense and did what they do best.  Douglas is now quite familiar to anyone who has seen Union Station perform since he formally joined the group back in 2000 and his epic virtuosity on the Dobro, an instrument that is perhaps obscure to many but which is a truly expressive instrument that acts as an acoustic steel guitar that is played with a slide and which Douglas now basically owns as the most brilliant player of it in contemporary music.  Rice's guitar solos displayed a resonance and rich clarity that drew from Blues, Jazz, Classical and Country styles in a way that allowed him to articulate many complex feelings and moods.  It was a wonder to behold the way in which he played and it brought back for me some happy memories of seeing perhaps the greatest modern master of the guitar, the Spaniard Andres Segovia, whose genius for innovation was not merely formal but brought to music a technique that was profoundly aesthetic in the sense of its need to please the hearer.

 

The guitar in Rice's hands resonated with a clarity that emerged from its rich timbre and the sustained vibrato that in his hands became a singular voice expressing the emotions and personality of its author. 

 

After this 15 minute interlude of the Rice-Douglas instrumental duet, Rice brought back Tyminski and then Krauss to each sing one song with him with just the guitar accompaniment.  Tyminski, who is now best known as the singing voice of George Clooney in the film "O Brother Where Art Thou," performed a sterling version of an old Norman Blake song, the lovely "Church Street Blues," while Krauss did an otherworldly version of Ralph McTell's "Streets of London."  And it was here that we could see how the influence of British Folk traditions were so entwined with the music of the American South.  And indeed, in the 1960s as American musicians were burrowing more deeply into the sources of their traditions that a class of performers found their way back to the European folk roots and where people like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who was once in a bluegrass group with Rice and the late David Grisman, explored the foundations of their music in ways that expressed their own love and appreciation for where this music came from.

 

On "Streets of London" I began to recall the beautiful music of the great Fairport Convention whose lead singer Sandy Denny brought the same sort of wistful ethereality to her performances as Krauss does today.  Hearing Tony Rice's expert and unique style made me think again of the great Richard Thompson who brought a panache to Fairport's electrified folk music that expanded boundaries and revisited an aesthetic that was often thought to be arid and anachronistic.

 

Again we are reminded of the concept of Radical Traditionalism where an artist is duty-bound to tradition and yet wanders into new areas and presents alternative ideas that refuses to leave tradition alone.  It is this mixture in the music of Tony Rice and of Alison Krauss where American culture extends beyond itself to find new elements that keep it dynamic, alive and vibrant.

 

The concert performances this evening showcased some of the old 60s Folk-Songwriter classics like Ian and Sylvia's "Four Strong Winds," Randy Newman's "I Think it's Going to Rain," and Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain" while at the same time it made room for Fats Domino's "I'm Walking" which was covered on the J.D. Crowe and the New South debut album.  Rice led the group in a stirring reading of his instrumental "Manzanita" which brought out the rich colors of his syncretistic approach to the music with Jazz and Blues never far from the strictly Bluegrass elements.

 

Interspersed in the set were but three Union Station songs, one from the latest Krauss CD, "Sawing on the Strings," which is one of the few pure bluegrass moments on an otherwise Pop-oriented recording and which coincidentally features Rice as well.  Krauss introduced her hit song "Let Me Touch You for a While" by relating the way in which she chooses songs to record.  Her method is to ask whether the song would pass the Tony Rice test and whether he himself would perform it.  And even as the subject matter of a song like "Let Me Touch You for a While" is a far cry from the standard Bluegrass and traditional fare of the Rice canon, its deep emotion and artistic beauty as a composition, filled with a rich and vibrant melody, does reflect the Rice aesthetic which in turn is a key part of the American musical tradition that he represents.

 

So what we witnessed was a rare evening to delight in the unparalleled artistry of musicians dedicated to their craft in ways that are out of the ordinary in the mercenary environment that we live in.  It was most certainly a concert that was performed for the sake of pure art and for the edification and entertainment of the audience rather than to create a buzz or to make headlines.  We can only hope that this collaboration will be recorded and made commercially available so that those who were not able to attend might hear the richness of the performances. 

 

In fact, the performance in DC was as close as the tour would get to the media centers of the Northeast corridor.  As Krauss is not Bjork and Union Station is not the Arcade Fire, one would doubt that this epic event will be reviewed in the New York Times or Rolling Stone magazine.  The short tour, dedicated to honoring the legacy of Rice as an artist and mentor, mostly played towns in the rural South where this music was born and where it still thrives as a living spirit and inspiration for so many.  In the fake atmosphere of an artificially-induced plastic Nashville culture, the authenticity of this music is itself a rarity in the iPod-driven market of song downloads that values affect over raw emotion, glitz over sincerity.

 

Having driven from New York to Washington for the show, I was enthralled by the wonder of its art and the way that the musicians were committed to the need to show both the respect as well as the beauty of this music.  Taking a step away from the pressures of promoting product - the name of the game for Country artists who live in a rigid and fiercely competitive marketplace - Alison Krauss and Union Station took time out to smell the roses and show their respect and devotion for a brilliant musician who has lamentably not become a household name in American culture, but whose talent as an artist is something that we should all know about and experience.  Of all the Krauss concerts that I have seen since the mid-90s when I first became aware of her unparalleled talents, this was the one that made the greatest impression on me.  It is easy to keep your integrity when you are unknown, much harder when you are as big a star as she is.

 

It was that devotion to art that raised what was a brilliant concert to something that was utterly transcendent and deeply moving for the audience.  The strength of Alison Krauss encompasses her incomparable talents as a violinist, producer and bandleader as it serves as a showcase for a voice that is without peer in contemporary music.  And yet tonight she went beyond all that by using all her skill and talent to humbly pay homage to a man who means so much to her. 

 

It was this profoundly moving example of humility and great art that will resonate for me long after the trip I made back on I-95 back to New York one spring evening.  This sense of the American genius was hammered home for me when I went to fill up my gas tank on the way home and mentioned to the attendant, a young man who looked more Fall Out Boy than Bill Monroe, who when I said that I had been to a Bluegrass concert immediately lit up and became wildly enthusiastic, recounting his own trips to Kentucky and Virginia to see the music which he had been turned on to by a friend.  It is this indomitable spirit of America that will continue to reverberate in our souls as heirs to the true greatness of this country and its noble children. 

 

 

David Shasha

 

From SHU 267, June 27, 2007

 

Concert Review: Alison Krauss and Union Station, Ives Concert Park, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, July 27, 2011

 

Driving up to Connecticut from Brooklyn to see Alison Krauss and Union Station I pondered the two most urgent issues in the news at the moment: The debt ceiling crisis in Washington and the emerging details about the radical beliefs of the Norway terrorist. 

 

I was wondering what it means to be an American today. 

 

In our federal government we have been dealing with many years of economic restructuring that has eviscerated the earnings of the average American worker and created a financial chasm between the super-rich and the working class.  The material lives of the wealthy – a class that has largely avoided productive work, preferring instead to make money by means of manipulating money – has taken on an obscene aspect that harbors disdain and contempt for those without big bank accounts.  We now have two Americas.

 

In Norway, we see Christian fundamentalist paranoia run rampant.  The sick killer has seemed to find inspiration from the Right Wing American religious extremists whose twisted nationalist values have now been turned from offensive and primitive to lethal and murderous.  The killer was inspired by the endless hatred and bile that is regularly spewed out by the Right Wing echo-chamber in America and which has now become the inspiration for a truly heinous madman for whom innocent human life has no sanctity.

 

These issues have an important impact on our culture.  Artists today have denied their own authenticity and have gone to pick up a quick buck by any means available.  Musicians who accrue success today play a role that slavishly affirms the exigencies of a marketplace which refuses originality and integrity.  Speaking your mind is seen as a quaint remnant of an irrelevant past.  If you want to “make it” you need to steer clear of speaking the truth.

 

The triumph of a mechanistic Hip-Hop culture, replete with gratuitous violence, sexism, and homophobia is matched by mechanized Country music and a deeply inane and sexually-charged Pop music directed solely at the teen libido.  Success is to be found in the gratuitous and the exploitative and not in the true and the authentic.

 

The American heartland, George W. Bush country, is too-easily appeased by the ultra-violent Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), NASCAR races where tens of thousands of people show up hoping to see cars crash and drivers get hurt, and corporate Country music like that of Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift whose artistic personae conform to a very limited sense of what it means to be human.  It is a world of clichéd fantasy and robotic simulacrum.

 

I recently saw two concerts that exemplified for me the problem of artistic expression in American music. 

 

The brilliant Bluegrass musician Chris Thile of the band Nickel Creek teamed up with Michael Daves to perform the Old-Time Bluegrass music at a bunch of hip New York clubs where it appeared that, sadly, few in the audience had ever even heard of Bill Monroe.  Thile has progressively moved out of the musical mainstream – specifically that of Nashville – and moved into more bohemian circles where Bluegrass takes on a new profile: that of a American curio that is blended into a pretense-filled cultural movement where it becomes an object frozen in time; an object of some fascination that removes it from its original context as an art that restores our social compact by allowing the artist to express emotions and values common to the collective.  It is a pretentious reading of a musical tradition that reviles pretense.

 

Nickel Creek began to develop a new Bluegrass sound that drew from the tradition, but also deployed modern elements that created a stunning hybrid.  Since the group has gone on permanent hiatus, Thile has tried his hand – to my mind not very successfully – at writing ever more complex compositions which have drifted further and further away from the hybrid template of Nickel Creek.  Thile wants to present his authentic artistic bona fides to the Julliard crowd and in this new context that means name-checking Radiohead as a sign of being in the know.  It is coolness for the sake of being cool.

 

The project with Michael Daves is, oddly enough, a rather straightforward reading of the old Bluegrass canon – Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, the Louvin Brothers – but placed in a very different context.  It is a triumph in this Internet age of affect over emotion, cleverness over humanism, posturing over authenticity.

 

I have previously written about the Dixie Chicks and their very personal struggle to maintain their authenticity and artistic integrity.  A few years back, the group took a big hit when its lead singer Natalie Maines excoriated President George W. Bush at a London concert right before the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.  The band was tarred and feathered by a Country music establishment that was more interested in jingoistic patriotism and corporatism than by honesty and self-reflection.

 

Since the Dixie Chicks’ 2006 album “Taking the Long Way,” Maines has largely dropped out of sight; the band, like Nickel Creek, off on a permanent hiatus.  The other members of the band, sisters Emily Robison and Martie MacGuire, have formed another group Court Yard Hounds that is struggling to maintain even a modicum of the Dixie Chicks’ success.  And though they have recorded a CD filled with wonderful songs, it was clear at their recent concert at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park that the old magic has largely vanished.  The great excitement of the Dixie Chicks has been lost amid the Right Wing populist static that now controls the Country music establishment. 

 

Gone is the radical energy of mavericks like Townes van Zandt, Emmylou Harris, and Gram Parsons who served to return Country music to its radical roots in social issues and human concerns.  Court Yard Hounds are continuing the Dixie Chicks’ retreat from traditional Country music; exemplifying the difficulty of anyone trying to maintain their creative independence from an industry that rejects anything that does not follow the script.  Conform to the model, or get out and do something else!

 

In this context, the storied career of Alison Krauss and her extraordinary band Union Station is that much more impressive. 

 

Since I first encountered her back in 1995, I was completely taken by the brilliant way that she was able to take the Old-Time American tradition of the Carter Family, Louvin Brothers, and Bill Monroe – a tradition that sacralized the everyday lives of human beings and their concerns – and infuse it with a contemporary spirit that spoke to who we are at the moment. 

 

Krauss is both an extraordinary practitioner of the classic Bluegrass style as well as a singer of rare intensity and beauty.  Her fiddle playing is technically expert while her diaphanous voice can bring any sensible human being to tears.

 

Krauss has been playing with Union Station since the early 1990s – they are now going on two decades together – and she has rarely deviated from her unique hybrid of traditional Bluegrass and deeply uplifting and moving Popcraft.  Her performances take the rough edges off of the sometimes harsh traditional style but never lose the essence of what that tradition represents.

 

The success of the soundtrack album for the Coen Brothers’ film “O Brother, Where art Thou” in 2000 catapulted her to a new level of commercial success which was furthered by her 2007 collaboration with Robert Plant called “Raising Sand.”  Both of those projects were helmed by T-Bone Burnett who has found commercial success using a very strange sonic palette that he has applied in a uniform way to Americana music.  That palette is somewhat subdued and low-key, transforming an often exuberant and life-affirming music into a rather gray and dull pastiche of traditional elements and ambient sounds that serves to flatten out the vibrancy of the traditional sound.

 

So it was a welcome surprise to learn this past Spring that Krauss and Union Station had reformed to record a new album, “Paper Airplane,” and had scheduled a concert tour to promote it.  The group’s previous album of new songs, “Lonely Runs both Ways,” was released way back in 2004 before the huge commercial success of the Plant collaboration.  The layoff has paid off great dividends as the band performing at the Ives Concert Park, a beautiful outdoor venue on the Danbury campus of the Western Connecticut State University, was refreshed and re-energized; more focused and intense than they were the last few times I had seen them back in 2004 and 2007.

 

“Paper Airplane” is one of the band’s best recordings, an uncompromising collection of songs that neatly falls into two thematic categories: the lovelorn songs of the pain of failed romance are handled by Krauss, while her partner Dan Tyminski takes the more earthy Americana songs that speak of the difficulties of work and making a life under trying economic circumstances.

 

The concert set its intense tone by starting off – as the CD does – with the emotionally-devastating one-two punch of “Paper Airplane” and “Dust Bowl Children.”

 

Krauss recently went through the tumult and heartache of a divorce which has given her performances of these songs of pain and longing even more intensity and drama.  The songs she performed this evening both from the new CD as well as the older numbers were carefully chosen to represent the theme of love lost and the brutal emotions that we suffer from as relationships disintegrate. 

 

These themes of desperation and loss permeated the set, as typified by the haunting lyric to “Ghost in this House”:

 

“I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm just a shadow upon these walls
As quietly as a mouse I haunt these halls
I'm just a whisper of smoke
I'm all that's left of two hearts on fire
That once burned out of control
You took my body and soul
I'm just a ghost in this house”

 

And the new song “Paper Airplane”:

 

“I've put it all behind me
Nothin' left to do or doubt
some may say
But every silver lining
always seems to have a cloud
that comes my way
Anticipated pleasure
or unexpected pain
No choice I fear
And love is hard to measure
hidden in the rain
That's why you'll find me

Here all alone and still wondering why
Waiting inside for the cold to get colder
And here where it's clear that I've wasted my time
hoping to fly 'cause it's almost over now”

 

Without ever referencing her personal situation, Krauss – in the classic American Bluegrass tradition – infused her performance of these songs with a deeply moving melancholy.  Her expressive and overwhelmingly beautiful voice created a rapturous effect that fused an exquisite porcelain-like grace with the bitter tears of human tragedy. 

 

Krauss is most certainly a worthy heir to the female giants of Country music: Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton; all of whom spoke the truth of their own experiences in a way that deeply resonated with their audience.  It was an emotional symbiosis expressed by the songs and the manner in which they were performed.

 

Krauss – reminiscent of Paul Simon’s recent concerts which explored his intensely personal concern with death and loss – chose her songs carefully to reflect these themes.  Her selections were predominantly geared to speak to her own personal loss and the pain of being a human being at the present moment.  This was done with little fanfare, but with a rare intensity that penetrated deep into the hearts of the thousands in attendance. 

 

It is a musical art that deploys the glorious aesthetic of the American tradition with a sincerely emotional stance that serves to share the experience of loss and despondency with a large crowd.  The concert was thus a deeply rewarding cathartic experience that proclaimed the centrality of our authentic human emotions and concerns in an age of plastic fakery and dissimulation.  It was the very opposite of the tabloid vulgarity that is presented to us by a voracious media that has little respect for human integrity.

 

Krauss took newer material like “Paper Airplane,” “Sinking Stone,” and her extraordinary reading of the great Richard Thompson’s own divorce lament “Dimming of the Day” and combined it with pointed readings of older numbers like “Let Me Touch You for Awhile,” her wonderful cover of The Foundations’ “Baby, Now that I’ve Found You” – long a Union Station staple, “Every Time You Say Goodbye,” “Stay,” and “Daylight”; all of which were strung together in a thematic unity to present love gone bad and the all-too-human frailties that can cause us to suffer as we struggle to keep family and career together.  The songs all connected to the themes of sorrow, longing, and loss; the classic Country music tropes.

 

The songs performed by Tyminski, a rugged yet deeply affecting performer who mixes intensity with a quick wit and a sense of humor, reflected the pains of work and economics.  At a time when many Americans have been devastated by the disastrous economic downturn, Tyminski took on socially conscious material like Peter Rowan’s staggering historically-charged expose “Dust Bowl Children,” his bouncy version of “Man of Constant Sorrow” made famous by the great Ralph Stanley, the agrarian morality tales “The Boy who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn” and Woody Guthrie’s biting “Pastures of Plenty,” and a brilliant piece of historical Americana – one of the most striking songs from the new album – “Bonita and Bill Butler” penned by Sidney Cox.  There was a deep sadness and melancholy feeling to these songs, but their main strength was an innate sense of how our society has frayed.   This social critique serves to balance the more personal songs of love and loss sung by Krauss.  These were very much songs of social conscience and protest that provide an echo of what is going on in many communities in America.

 

As we see quite clearly in “Dust Bowl Children”;

 

“My father’s name was Hannibal, Mama was Hanna-Mariah.
Everything we owned got all burned up in the great depression fire
Strip mines and one crop farming drained the green earth dry.
We lost it all till only love was left, and that was the one thing money can’t buy.

We’re all Dust Bowl Children
Singin’ the dust bowl song
Well, the crops won’t grow,
And the dust just blows.
When the green grass growing fields are gone.

Well, they said in California, there’s work of every kind.
The only work that I got out there was waiting on a welfare line.
Once I had a dollar, once I had a dream.
Now all the work is being done by a big ole machine...”

Very quietly and without pretense, the combination of the social and the personal in the songs performed served to subtly comment on the difficulties that Americans face today.  We have gone through many cultural and political changes in recent years, and we now find ourselves with a very uncertain present and a cloudy future.  Many Americans are out of work and our families have lost their cohesion.  In the American musical tradition that is exemplified by Bluegrass these themes are an integral part of the landscape.  They have a timeless relevance that is perfectly suited to our difficult times. 

 

As Ray Charles famously said, the genius of Country music is its ability to tell human stories that we can all relate to.  Love, making a living, the pain of loss, trying to survive in a world that often seems hell-bent on tearing you down and destroying your human dignity and family; all these values are today rarely addressed with any integrity or sympathy.

 

The artistic construct that Alison Krauss has put together with Union Station represents the bedrock of human creativity and expression in contemporary culture.  It is the most important group of musicians playing in our country today because it has refused to compromise its values.  It has continued to express what it believes in a way that reinforces the great musical traditions of our heritage. 

 

The sheer brilliance of their playing, from Krauss’ expert fiddling, to the truly outstanding dobro playing of the legendary Jerry Douglas, the multi-instrumental virtuosity of Ron Block and Tyminski, and the clarity of bassist Barry Bales, marks Union Station as our most effective carriers of a heritage that has often been shunted aside in the mad rush of young artists to achieve commercial success and financial security by abandoning creativity and authenticity.

 

The set ended, as it has many times before, with a vibrant performance of Bad Company’s “Oh, Atlanta” – another Union Station warhorse that has always seemed counter-intuitive as a Bluegrass song, but a triumph nonetheless – but it was in the astonishing encore that the concert rose to a level of ethereality and sheer transcendence.

 

In this set of spiritually-charged songs, from the staggering a cappella version of “Down by the River to Pray,” to a tear-drenched rendition of the late Keith Whitley classic “When You Say Nothing at All,” to Ron Block’s now-classic religious ode “There is a Reason” which finally ended the show, the group huddled around one microphone – as they have so many times in the past – and became one unit.  Union Station at that moment successfully expressed the fears, frustrations, and complications of what it means to be an American at the present moment.  Coming together as a group they inspire in us our ability to persevere under some very trying circumstances.

 

As the lyrics of Block’s extraordinary song “There is a Reason” so movingly express:

 

“Hurtin' brings my heart to You, a fortress in the storm
When what I wrap my heart around is gone
I give my heart so easily to the ruler of this world
When the one who loves me most will give me all

In all the things that cause me pain You give me eyes to see
I do believe but help my unbelief
I've seen hard times and I've been told
There is a reason for it all”

 

In the end, the majestic power of faith – in ourselves, in each other, and in the Lord – is that transcendent moment that can neutralize the pain and tragedy that we face in our everyday lives.  Using the simple tools of our American musical tradition – the fiddle, the dobro, the mandolin, the banjo, and the double-bass – this is music that is as simple as it is profound, as elementary as it is meaningful, as graceful as it is gritty.  It is an art that is currently in extremely short supply in our benighted culture. 

 

This is music that has been nurtured by artists who have spent many years honing their craft to perfection and who are not looking to be vain, clever, or hip.  It is just about what it means to be a flesh-and-blood human being; expressing the emotions and values that we all share and the hope that there will be a brighter tomorrow as today we experience pain and sorrow.  It is an art that allows us to engage with the bitter reality we often face, but also to sing out loud our joy and our passion in songs that do not deny our realities, but which serve to affirm what it means to be a human being and to never deny who we are.

 

Alison Krauss and Union Station remain for me the most important contemporary expression of the American spirit; unafraid to pour out feelings and express human values in a direct way that connects to our historical experience as a culture, but also to our current problems and difficulties. 

 

Tonight the Connecticut audience experienced all the beauty and all the darkness that makes us human.  This engagement with our deepest realities has sadly become buried in the detritus of contemporary music and a culture which all too often denies our humanity, putting in its place an inauthentic and frivolous set of ephemeral values meant only to keep us amused and entertained; an anesthetic device to keep us stupid and in denial about who we really are as people. 

 

The true American values that are enshrined in the music of Alison Krauss and Union Station have stood the test of time and can continue to act for us as a signpost for how to live a rich and passionate life if we can just open our hearts to them.

 

 

David Shasha 

 

From SHU 498, October 12, 2011